2025 Was the Worst Year
on Record for Internet Shutdowns.
313 government-imposed blackouts. 52 countries. Not a single day passed without at least one government cutting its citizens off from the internet. Here is the full breakdown — and why it matters for everyone who holds crypto.
By the numbers
Shutdowns documented across 52 countries
Access Now, 2025
Global economic damage — up 156% vs 2024
Top10VPN
Hours of disruption — a 70% rise year-on-year
Surfshark
People affected by political blackouts
Internet Society
A record-breaking year of digital repression
Access Now documented 313 internet shutdowns across 52 countries in 2025 — the highest annual count ever recorded. But beyond the raw number, the nature of these shutdowns has shifted. Governments are no longer just flipping a kill switch during crises. They have industrialised the practice.
Russia alone accounted for 57 incidents, generating an estimated $11.9 billion in economic losses — not from one prolonged blackout, but from hundreds of targeted, rolling restrictions applied surgically to suppress dissent, disrupt coordination, and throttle independent reporting.
Iraq shut down nationwide access nine times — each one timed not to a war or an uprising, but to exam season. The logic: stop students from cheating. The consequence: an entire country cut off for the sake of a test.
Worst offenders — 2025
Russia
India
Iraq
Tanzania
Cameroon
Afghanistan
Iran
Sudan
Myanmar
VenezuelaA new playbook: targeted app shutdowns
Full nationwide blackouts are expensive — for governments as much as citizens. They kill GDP, crater business confidence, and attract international attention. So in 2025, states refined their technique.
94 shutdowns targeted specific platforms rather than the entire internet: WhatsApp, TikTok, Telegram, and Instagram were the most common targets. Afghanistan banned Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat under Taliban decree — all three remain inaccessible today. Nepal blocked 26 platforms simultaneously during a period of political unrest.
VPN downloads spiked in 62 countries as a direct response. Populations are not passive. When governments close doors, people find windows — but those windows narrow every year as deep-packet inspection technology improves and cross-border data-sharing agreements multiply.
"Tanzania shut down the internet for five full days during its election. Thousands were reportedly killed under the blackout — unseen, unreported, unaccountable."
What this means for your money
If you hold crypto and live in — or travel through — any of these regions, an internet shutdown does not just cut you off from social media. It cuts you off from your wallet. Centralised exchanges go dark. Apps that depend on RPC nodes fail silently. You can see your balance, but you cannot move a single token.
This is the problem OffChain was built to solve. When the internet disappears, SMS does not. A cellular signal — even a single bar of 2G — is enough to sign and broadcast a transaction. The relay handles the rest. Your funds stay yours, regardless of what a government decides overnight.
2025 proved this is not a niche edge case. With 313 shutdowns across 52 countries and not a single day without an active blackout somewhere on Earth, offline-capable crypto infrastructure is not a feature — it is a requirement.
Send crypto with just a text message.
No Wi-Fi. No data. No internet required.